Down the Rabbit Hole
by DracoTerrae
Summary: Bellamy grew up bathed in his mother's fear of the supernatural communities that existed alongside the rest of the world. But shortly after Aurora died his sister got bitten by a werewolf, so he sought out a local magic shop owned by a witch named Clarke. And somewhere along the way he and Clarke became friends. Prequel to "Fanning the Flames," but can be read either order.


**Author's Note:  
So, the whole time I was writing "Fanning the Flames," especially the part where I referenced Bellamy's backstory and how he and Clarke met, I was thinking about expanding it to its own story. And now I finally got around to finishing it. So, I hope you enjoy getting a little more insight on Bellamy's story and the beauty that is Bellarke friendship. (The romance comes in "Fanning the Flames.")  
**

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Bellamy Blake was part of the first generation that grew up with knowledge of the magical world. He was four when it appeared in the newspapers: "Magical World Real," "Not Just in Your Fairytales," etc. etc. To him it was a miracle, his stories weren't just on the pages of his favorite books; they actually existed! It was a kid's dream come to life…

Until it wasn't.

He was ten when his dad was killed. "A rogue pack of wendigoes," the police told his mother as he sat at the top of the stairs, holding his five-year-old sister, Octavia, as she cried. It turned out that the monsters in his stories were real too. His mother had always been a little leery of the magical world, not quite trusting it. "If they weren't all bad, why were they hiding?" she would say.

Then when her husband was killed by something from the magical world, she decided it was unsafe to go outside their house at all. A strong reaction, true, but at ten years old he didn't want to run into any "rogue wendigoes" either. Nonetheless, when you're being homeschooled and your mother won't even let you go in the backyard to play, it gets a little extreme. At least he had his sister.

Before the accident, his mom had a shop in town, Aurora's Clothing & Repair. But after Bellamy's dad died, she sold the building and worked only from home. Money had been tight before, but it was even tighter now. They struggled to make ends meet, yet somehow their mom always made it work. "Your sister, your responsibility," his mother would say, whenever she shut herself in her sewing room to get work done. So, Bellamy became brother, teacher, and partial parental figure to Octavia.

It was probably a result of this added responsibility that he noticed how much they actually did struggle. He worked hard to keep Octavia from noticing, too. When his mom had one too many times attempted to convince him that she had already eaten dinner, when he knew she hadn't, he stepped into her sewing room with a proposal.

"Mom," fourteen-year-old Bellamy had said shyly. "I could go get our groceries, so we don't have to pay the delivery fee."

"Oh, honey, no," Aurora had replied quickly and worriedly. "It's not safe outside. Those magical creatures, they're just waiting for innocent little boys to wander outside so they can attack them or put them under a spell."

But Bellamy could see how his mother was withering away from not eating enough and working herself to the bone. He himself was a little skinnier than was healthy for a boy of his age. So he went onto their computer and searched for articles and stories and any information he could gather about the magical world. Some of it terrified him, stories about trolls living under bridges, werewolves running through forest preserves at night, people being cursed for looking at witches funny; other parts weren't so bad, winged fairies flying up to fix antennae on skyscrapers, mermaids saving people from a boat wreckage. It was these good articles that he showed to his mom and argued about the amount of money they could save.

When she finally gave in—she had fewer clients this past month than ever before—he made his first trek outside in four years. He clutched the list of groceries in his hand as he walked into the grocery store after locking up his bike. _The scariest creatures only come out at night_ , he reminded himself as he made his way nervously down the aisles.

He spotted Octavia's favorite cereal on the top shelf and try as he might, his limbs would stretch far enough. He was just debating whether to climb onto the bottom shelf for extra leverage, when a shadow fell over him and an enormous hand gently grabbed the box, lowering it to his level.

"Just one? Or do you want two?" a booming voice asked. Bellamy turned and was face level with the stomach of what he could only assume was a real-live giant. He craned his head back and was greeted by a single-eyed gaze. Nope. Not just any kind of giant, a cyclops.

He stumbled back into the shelves. "Just one," he squeaked, taking the box quickly and shoving it in his cart.

"Alrighty, you have a good day now," the cyclops bellowed and walked away, with a surprisingly light step.

Bellamy stood there and caught his breath, heart thundering loudly in his ears. He had lived. The cyclops didn't try to kill him, but Bellamy wasn't going to take any other chances. He quickly finished the shopping, staying under budget and hurried home.

As soon as he entered the house, Aurora's arms were squeezing tight around him. "You're home. You're safe," she murmured repeatedly. He didn't know if she was comforting him or herself. Finally, she pulled back. "Did you run into anything supernatural? Did they try to hurt you?"

"No," he lied. There was no way she would let him go back out if he told her about the cyclops.

And so it went for two more years. Bellamy doing their shopping and slowing coming to realize that the supernatural world wasn't all that bad. During this time, he also noticed the budget his mom gave him became smaller and smaller. So after many long arguments, Bellamy got his first job: the dishwasher at one of his mom's client's restaurant. Only after Aurora was told countless times that he would only interact with staff and that they were all humans—her words, not his—did she allow him to accept the job. Three years later, when Bellamy got promoted to server, he only told his mom he got a raise.

In the evenings he would come home, Octavia would pull him into her bedroom and closer the door. "Tell me stories, Bellamy," she would insist.

"Do you want stories or to hear about work?" he would ask, knowing exactly what she was trying to get out of him.

She smiled shyly. "Did you meet any magic people today?"

He laughed. "Ummm, I waited on a table of dwarves today. They were loud and obnoxious and drank way too much beer."

She frowned. "They just sound like people."

"Sure, but they were short and stocky and had long, elaborate beards with braids."

Then the restaurant got trashed due to an unfortunate run-in between a group of orcs and some goblins. Aurora made him quit on the spot. He jumped from job to job and kept the family afloat, always fibbing a little about what he was doing and his amount of contact with the magical world.

Then when he was twenty-two, Aurora died suddenly. The doctor said it was a brain aneurism. And Bellamy became Octavia's guardian. While he had had interactions with the supernatural world up until this point in his life, it was six months after he had legal custody of his sister, that his life with the magical half of the world truly began…

"Bell, don't be pissed or scared or overreact—"

"O, when you start a sentence like that you're making it all the more likely that I will do any number of those things," he looked up from the book he was reading to see his sister sit down on the other half of the couch looking more than a bit apprehensive. That was when he noticed she was holding her right arm with her left. His big brother panic mode immediately started to go off. "What happened?" he half screeched reaching for her arm.

"So, I kind of snuck out last night to go to Harper's and…" her voice trailed off and she brought her right arm forward. Loping around her hand was the perfect set of teeth marks, a small wolf's teeth marks. And then he realized last night was the night before a full moon. The very reason why he had told Octavia under no circumstances was she allowed to go over to her new friend's house (she had convinced him to let her transfer to the public high school for her senior year). "I honestly thought it was a puppy."

"What were you thinking, Octavia?" he yelled.

Tears started to well up in her eyes. "I know. I wasn't. I'm sorry, Bellamy."

She looked so broken and despite the panic welling in his breast, he shoved it aside and pulled her into his chest. He rubbed soothing circles into her back. "It's okay," he repeated over and over again. "I'll figure something out. It's not your fault. I'm not mad at you." And he wasn't mad at Octavia. He was mad at himself for letting this happen to her.

After she shuffled her way back to her room, Bellamy dove for his laptop. "Cure for werewolf bite" he typed into the search engine. It came up with nothing useful, either that is wasn't possible or some obscure rumor that had never been verified. He had hundreds of thousands of different pages and nothing was telling what he wanted.

Witches had all kinds of cures, right? Maybe he could find a witch near him that could cure his sister. "Witches near me" he typed into the box. There! Just downtown! "Griffin's Magic Shop" he muttered, noting the address and grabbing the keys to his car.

In fifteen minutes he was at the door. It was a small, non-descript storefront, something he probably wouldn't have thought twice about on a normal day. As he pulled open the door he barely noticed the small sign that read, "We're a Little More than Hocus Pocus." He would have chuckled at that, but today was not a normal day.

He barreled through the front of the shop ignoring the shelves of books and tables covered with charms and trinkets. He didn't see anyone. No customers, no workers, no one. He stormed up to the register. "Be there in a minute," a strained voice called from somewhere.

Bellamy drummed his fingers on the counter anxiously. He was about to call to the person in back to figure out what was taking so long when a young blonde woman hurried through the curtain that separated the shop from a back room. Her hair was a tangled mess on the top of her head. She stopped on the other side of the counter and smiled brightly at him. "Sorry, those dust bunnies are getting more vicious every year. What can I help you with?"

"I need the cure for a werewolf bite," he demanded, on a one-track mission.

The cheerful, helpful smile dropped from her face, but she maintained a tight-lipped near grimace of a smile. "There is no _'cure'_ for a werewolf bite," she clipped.

"There has to be something," he insisted. "You're magical creatures, shouldn't you have figured this out by now? Isn't there a spell you can do or a potion you can make? Do I have to find a genie and make a wish?"

He watched as she visibly took a deep breath to calm herself; there was still a storm brewing behind her shockingly blue eyes. "First, let's get this straight, _I_ am not a magical creature. Witches, werewolves, fairies, vampires, elves, giants, et cetera are not _creatures_. We are magical or supernatural _beings_. _Creatures_ are dragons, griffins, hippogriffs, phoenixes—you get the picture." She met his eyes to make sure he understood.

He didn't have time for this. "Okay, yeah, whatever. But there has to be _something_. Or maybe werewolves and other vicious creatures, sorry _beings_ ," he slightly mocked. "should be kept in cages when they can't control themselves. And maybe you witches should work on being able to clean up your friends' messes."

He watched as she flexed her fingers and closed her eyes. Any trace of a smile had completely vanished. When she opened her eyes, she glared daggers at him. "I'll get back to you being a humanistic, mundane asshole in a minute. But there are laws of magic, just as there are laws of physics and other sciences; there are certain facts that cannot be altered. Some of which include the process of becoming a werewolf or vampire, for example."

"My baby sister! She didn't ask for this! She shouldn't have to become a werewolf!" He spat out the last word as if it had burned his tongue, slamming his hands onto the counter. The girl turned her back to him and began grabbing various things from jars and started to grind them with a motor and pestle. If he wasn't so worked up he might think the smells were soothing. "Hey! I was talking to you," he yelled at her.

She continued working, putting the ground ingredients and strange liquids into a common kitchen pot. "Honestly, it's better if I don't have to look at your face right now. Because it's fucking people like you who are the reason we were terrified to come out of hiding. People like you who are the reason children would have nightmares about being found out. That they would try to hide who there were even after the magical world was revealed to the mundane one." She snapped her fingers and a fire lit on the small stove next to where she was working. She moved the pot over to it and stirred.

"My sister didn't want to be part of your magical world. She was just innocently walking home, minding her own business, when she was attacked by a werewolf. She should have an option to not turn into the mindless thing that assaulted her!"

The blonde whipped around and came just shy of being nose to nose with him. "Do _not_ speak of people or things that you clearly know nothing about. You talk about magic as if it is this great evil pestilence on your world and yet you come into _my_ shop asking for my _magic_ to help you. You act like you own the damn planet and demand a cure for who a person is. What the world really needs is a cure for assholes like you!" She huffed and turned back to her stove, pouring the contents into a small plastic water bottle. "And if it really was an attack, you need to call the police."

"And what the fuck are they going to do about it? They're human. They can't take on supernatural things, let alone werewolves!"

The bottle turned to ice in her hand. "You know what? I'm done. You live in your world of ignorance and bigotry." She shoved the bottle into his chest. "Tell your sister to drink this tonight, just before the moon rises; it'll ease her first transition. Now, if you would kindly, get the fuck out of my shop." A strong wind threw him out of the store and onto the sidewalk. The door to the shop slamming behind him. He heard the lock click.

He huffed his irritation and pulled out his phone. Maybe he could find that genie to help him. Then he glanced at the sky, it was already darkening. He looked down to the small water bottle in his hand. It looked just like any other water bottle, but the smell of the liquid inside was definitely not something he had drank before. He sighed, maybe he should get this to Octavia or maybe it had just been a puppy after all. He climbed back in his car and headed home.

It wasn't a puppy. Octavia insisted that he not watch. She drank what was in the water bottle and went into the basement. He sat outside the door, smelling the remains of the burnt pasta dish he had for dinner, and waited as he heard a few screams of pain. It was the hardest thing he ever had to go through: knowing that Octavia was in pain and that there was nothing he could do to help her.

A few minutes later there was a small scratching at the basement door and a quiet whine. The wolf barked and started whining and pawing at the door again. It didn't sound vicious and it was his sister. His heart was breaking at the sad sound coming from the other side of the door; maybe she was still in there. He clung to the thread of hope and stood. Opening the door a crack, he saw a sleek, dark wolf standing at the top of the stairs looking up at him. "O?" he asked.

The wolf yipped and pushed its way into the kitchen, immediately heading for the refrigerator. "Seriously? I thought you said you ate dinner."

She barked and pawed at the closed door. "Goddammit, I'm even a pushover when you're a wolf," he grumbled and opened the fridge. She immediately started nosing the ground beef he had originally been planning to use for dinner. "Are you supposed to eat raw meat? I know wolves do, but I don't want you to get an upset stomach when you turn back. How about a hot dog? Those are already pre-cooked."

She sat back on her haunches and he got her out a couple hot dogs which she scarfed down quickly. "So no urges to attack or eat me?" he asked.

If she could have rolled her eyes, she would have. "Right, well, I'm going to go watch some TV."

And that's what they did, curled up on the couch and watched some bad late night television. It would have been a typical night for them, except Octavia wasn't usually a wolf while they did it.

He woke up the next day to the smell of bacon sizzling on the stove. Following his nose to the kitchen. Octavia stood in front of the stove in her pajamas. "I'm still craving meat," she explained.

"As long as I get some," he replied. "Do you want pancakes too?"

"No, just the bacon. Oh! Do we have sausage?" she exclaimed diving for the fridge, grinning triumphantly when she pulled out a package of breakfast sausage.

When they sat down at the small, rickety table to eat, Octavia with her two kinds of meat, Bellamy with his bacon and pancakes, Octavia looked up at him. "Where did you get that potion you gave me last night? Everything I had been reading said the first transition was the hardest, painful and could last for hours. I was terrified. That's why I didn't want you there. Plus, I would be naked and that'd be super awkward. But, anyway, mine was just a few bones popping and growing and it was over."

"I went to a magic shop to find a cure. The witch said there wasn't one, but made you that potion," he kind of muttered into his forkful of pancakes.

" _You_ voluntarily talked to a witch?" Octavia asked incredulously. "I know you're generally okay with the supernatural world, but you've never sought it out, only what you came across at work."

"It was for my baby sister," he shrugged.

There was a long pause. Then in a small voice Octavia asked, "Do you think she'd know anything else to help me?"

He dropped his fork and it clattered on his plate. He quickly picked it up and continued with his meal, shrugging again. "Maybe," he mumbled around his food.

"Would you take me?" she whispered.

"I don't know, O," he answered honestly after a moment of thinking.

That brought a little bit of the fire back into his sister. "Why not?"

He coughed into his napkin. "I may or may not have insulted her and her world. And it may or may not have resulted in her yelling at me to 'get the fuck out of her shop.'"

"Bellamy!" Octavia reprimanded. "You're lucky she didn't curse you or something!" she paused. "She didn't curse you or anything, did she?"

"I don't _think_ so."

"Okay, well, you should apologize to her either way. I know you're an ass sometimes, but if you're admitting it, you must have been an even bigger jerkwad that normal."

"Yeah, I really don't think she wants to see me again."

"I don't care. We're going back there. You're apologizing. And I'm going to see if she can answer some of my questions. The internet is really a terrifying place to try to get answers."

And that was how Bellamy found himself returning to Griffin's Magic Shop. This time he noticed the sign on the door and had to suppress a small chuckle. There were a few more people in the shop today, too. A gangly boy with goggles was browsing through the bookshelves near a Korean boy who was typing at a laptop. A huge crow stared down at Bellamy and Octavia from the top of a nearby shelf. _That_ was definitely not there yesterday.

"Clarke! People!" the Asian boy called, not looking up from his computer.

"Can you help them, Monty? I'm a little busy! Niylah just brought in my order of twisting nettles and I accidentally dropped the box and now they're trying to take over the storeroom!" The cry was accented by a small "oof."

The boy looked up from his laptop, shaking his head with a smile. "Can I help you with anything?" he asked Octavia and Bellamy.

"I had a few questions, I was hoping someone could answer," Octavia said uncharacteristically shy.

He cocked his head and thought for a moment. "Is it a more technical question about a spell or a more philosophical question about the magical world. No offense, but you guys look like mundanes." The crow cawed from his spot. "Oh, a newly changed wolf? Yeah, I should probably get Clarke."

"How did you…?" Octavia let her question trail off.

"He told me," the boy nodded his head at the crow. "He's my familiar, kind of attuned to magic of all sorts." He shrugged it off like it wasn't a big deal. "I'll get Clarke." He got up and headed to the room behind the counter from where the witch's voice originated.

The gangly boy plunked a large volume down on the table next to the laptop. "Hi!" he greeted exuberantly. "I'm Jasper. That was Monty. We don't actually work here, just friends of the owner."

"I'm Octavia, and that guy hovering awkwardly in the background is my brother," she greeted. Bellamy scoffed indignantly. He was _not_ hovering in the background. He took a deliberate step to stand next to her.

"So, which one of you is the wolf?" Jasper asked with no sense of boundaries.

"Me," Octavia answered. "What are you?" she followed boldly, apparently having lost the ounce of shyness she had held.

"I'm just a mundane. Like you," he nodded to Bellamy.

"Mundane?" Octavia asked, apparently already getting some of her questions answered.

"Non-magic folk. Monty's a warlock, if you didn't get that by his familiar. And seeing as though you purposefully came to her shop, I'm guessing you know Clarke's a witch. And speak of the devil," he smiled as the same blonde from yesterday came out from the back room, shouting her thanks to Monty.

"Scaring off the new people yet?" she teased Jasper. Her expression darkened when she spotted Bellamy. "Oh, it's you. I thought when I told you to 'get the fuck out of my shop,' the 'and don't come back' was implied."

Before he could rise to the comment, Octavia put a strong hand on his back and pushed him forward a little. Was it possible she had gotten stronger with the new wolfiness to her? "Bellamy's here to _apologize_ for whatever it was he said yesterday," she told Clarke and gave Bellamy a pointed look.

Clarke crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow expectantly. Bellamy knew he was in the wrong. He knew he had said some things he probably shouldn't. But that didn't mean he liked apologizing. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "I shouldn't have said some of those things. I was freaking out about what happened to Octavia."

She stared hard at him for a moment. "Apology accepted." She turned toward Octavia and her demeanor changed completely, no longer surly and brusque, but friendly and open. "So, I guess that means you're one of the newest members of the magical world. And you probably have a lot of questions."

Octavia nodded. Clarke walked toward the bookshelves and pulled a few books, talking as she moved. "I'm going to lend you a few books. Or you could buy them if you want to keep them. They're all accurate information about werewolves and I even included one of my favorite fictions. It's a romance written by a werewolf; it's great on its own, but it also gives you some insight on her perspective of growing up as a wolf in a city." She placed the books down at the table at which Monty had been working. "I'm going to have your brother start reading them while we talk, so he actually gains some knowledge and isn't quite such a dickweed. Oh, and make sure to have Monty or Jasper show you the website they created. It is the only site I can guarantee has accurate information about the magical world. There's also a forum on there for different people to ask their questions and get responses from magical beings who know first-hand." She looked at Bellamy. "Sit. Read. Educate yourself," she said tersely.

"You do this a lot, don't you?" Octavia asked, a slightly awed expression on her face. Bellamy recognized the look immediately; Octavia had found a new role model. He sighed. Well, he had probably get used to seeing Clarke then.

Sure enough, every day after school Octavia would go to Clarke's shop, sometimes dragging Bellamy, sometimes not. But when Bellamy finished all the books Clarke had given him and Octavia, he found himself wanting to go back to her shop for his own purposes.

It took over a week before he found himself outside her shop sans Octavia. He debated for a while, shuffling foot to foot. Suddenly Clarke's voice sounded from right behind him. "Shops open to anyone who wants to properly educate themselves about the magic world, even assholes like you."

He jumped about a foot in the air and spun around. She was walking up to the door, struggling with an oversized box. Bellamy immediately opened the door for her to walk through. She staggered across the floor and dropped the box on the counter by the register with a thud, heaving in relief.

"How were you going to get the door if I wasn't here?" Bellamy asked.

"Magic," she shot him a smile.

He laughed openly. "Should have figured."

She leaned against the counter and raised an eyebrow. "So what brings you to my shop?"

He ran a hand over his hair, suddenly nervous. "I, uh, I wanted to know if I could read some more of your books on other magical beings and creatures. O's still working her way through the ones on werewolves you lent us; she'll bring them back when she's done. Oh, and I should probably pay for the fiction one you lent her, she keeps running to whatever room I'm in to tell me this 'other interesting tidbit' from it, so basically it's her new favorite book."

Clarke smiled genuinely, "Tell her it's a gift. The transition can be hard and I think that book is letting her know that she's not alone in this. I've also put out feelers to some local packs; wolves are pack animals, it'll do her good to run with one."

"Thank you," he breathed. "I know I wasn't very good with this whole situation." Clarke gave him a hard look. "Okay, I was awful and an asshole. But you really helped Octavia despite of that. You helped me, too," he added quieter.

Her eyes were soft, her smile happy. "I'd do it for anyone. Now go read your books. 'Beings' section here, 'Creatures section there; they're both arranged alphabetically by topic. If you want any help, give a shout. I'll be shelving these crystal balls."

He nodded his thanks and went to find some books. Witches and warlocks, that would be his next read. Once he had gather several books on the topic, he made himself comfortable on the floor, leaning against one of the shelves and began to read. Clarke would probably lend him the books, but for some reason it just felt right to settle in here and read.

It became his routine. When he didn't have work and Octavia was at school he'd make his way to Clarke's small shop and pull whatever book he was reading from the shelf and either sit on the floor or at the table. Sometimes he wouldn't even read at all, but instead help Clarke with shelving or just talk to her as she brewed some potions.

In these weeks he began to meet the rest of her friends. Sometimes Monty and Jasper would drop by. Other times it would be Wells, a ghost who made it his mission to make Bellamy jump every time he appeared. Or one time when he stayed late to help with inventory, a vampire named Murphy. His favorite was probably Raven, whom he had incidentally known before, just not that she was a fairy.

"Still driving that clunker?" she had greeted him when he had showed up to continue his readings. He was now onto a book about all the different types of dragons and their relatives; he was incidentally now officially mad at the Harry Potter franchise for conflating dragons and wyverns in their portrayal of the Hungarian Horntail.

"Um, yeah," he said caught off guard by his mechanic's presence at the shop. "Hi, Raven. Are you looking for a spell that will make a car tell you what's wrong with it or something?"

"Don't be ridiculous; that doesn't exist." She turned abruptly to Clarke who was working on something at her potions kitchen. "Wait, does it, Clarke? Can you do something like that?"

Clarke laughed openly. "I don't know of any existing spell or anything, but I can look into it, if you really want." She smiled at Bellamy. "Raven's just here because she strained a wing playing Sweachle and I'm making her a salve. And before you ask Sweachle is a game with ball and hoops, often played by fairies; it's actually what J.K. Rowling based Quidditch on."

"A wing?" he asked, flabbergasted.

Raven looked taken aback. "Did you not know I was a tinker fairy? Did you not actually read my business card?"

"I, no. My car broke down, you were the nearest mechanic, you had good reviews."

Clarke laughed again. "Her business slogan is literally, "We'll get you back on the road so quick it's magic."

"I thought it was just a saying," Bellamy tried to defend himself.

The two girls laughed uproariously. "Don't ever change, Blake," Raven wheezed.

"Wait, did you say J.K. Rowling based Quidditch on the game? Does that mean that she's…"

"A witch?" Clarke smiled. "Yup, though she wrote the series to play around with Mundane tropes of magic. Only some elements of the books reflect the real magical world."

Bellamy's jaw dropped. "Any other famous people who are really from the magical world?"

"How much time do you have?" Raven asked.

Bellamy sat down and listened raptly for the rest of the afternoon.

From then on he slowly began to integrate with the group of misfits. Octavia would join sometimes, though after Clarke successfully matched her with a pack, she tended to split her time between the groups. But his favorite pastime was still just hanging out with Clarke as she went about her day at the magic shop.

One day while reading another book on magical creatures, he looked up to where Clarke was working on her house cleaning potions.

"Do you just really like griffins?"

"What?"

"The shop. _Griffin's_ Magic Shop."

She laughed brightly and loudly. "Griffin is my last name, you dork; the shop has been passed down through the generations." She lowered her voice conspiratorially, "There's an old family legend that my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, however many greats, grandad was the one who first came across a creature that was half eagle, half lion, and named it after himself."

"That's not possible," Bellamy scoffed. "It dates back to ancient Greece, γρύψ from γρυπός, meaning curved, hooked, or hook-nosed, related to beak."

"And who's to say I'm not related to an ancient Greek with a hook-nose?" she asked. "If you look in certain books on magical creatures, I'm a footnote—or well my family is." She hummed thoughtfully. "Maybe I could have Murphy to ask around…"

"Murphy's the vampire, right?"

"Yeah. He's almost 250 years old, which is young, and he's just from America. But I'm sure he has older friends and contacts in Europe; you don't just hang out in the same country for two centuries."

Bellamy's mind started whirring, Murphy looked around his age, so "225 years ago in America," Bellamy mused. He saw Clarke smile as he did the math. Sue him if he was into history. "He wasn't from Philadelphia, was he?" he asked in wonderment.

Clarke nodded. "If you ever ask him about why he became a vampire, he'll just shrug and say it he did what it took to survive."

"Holy shit, do you think he'd ever talk history with me?"

Clarke chuckled. "Good luck. I don't think he ever paid too much mind to what was going on around him. Your better bet would be Professor Dante Wallace down at Arkadia University. He's more into Art History, but I'm sure he knows some things or could help you make contact with someone else."

"You just made my day. No, my week. Any chance you could hook me up with his email?'

She smiled back at him happily. "Of course. Just let me finish up this batch and I'll peek through address book."

"You still have an address book? In this day and age?"

"Of course. When you own a magic shop and are known for your connections to all the factions of the magical community you want to have as many contacts as possible. Not to mention, keep those contacts organized. My personal contacts, friends and such, you for example, are just in my phone."

"We're friends?" he asked happily.

"Of course. Did you think we weren't? You spend every other day in my shop."

"No, I did," he smiled. "I just like hearing it from you."

She shook her head with a smile. "You're ridiculous sometimes, Bellamy Blake."

"Well, I wouldn't want to be a boring mundane now, would I?"

"You? Boring? Never."

That day he walked out of her shop to go make dinner for Octavia with one of his brightest smiles. He and Clarke were friends. Based on their first interaction, he never would have guessed this would happen. But it did and it left a warm, fuzzy feeling in his gut.

He had been regularly coming into her shop for several months when Clarke propped her head on her hands, staring at him from behind the counter after she had just finished a sale. "What do you do for a living, again?" she asked.

"I'm a bartender down at The Dropship," he answered, a slight question in his voice.

She hummed. "You could do better."

"What's that supposed to mean?" he questioned with somewhat fake outrage.

"Have you ever thought of applying for the police academy? You have a natural obsession with protecting people. And…" she trailed off.

"And what?" he was genuinely curious now.

A small brush of pink rose across her cheeks. "I think you would be good for the Supernatural Relations Division. With all the books you've been reading, you're probably more knowledgeable than a lot of the people on the force. And," she took a deep breath. "it's no secret I misjudged you when we first met; I thought you were a complete bigoted asshole, but turns out you're not. Just misinformed. And if you can change your mind and learn to understand our world, you would be a perfect liaison, a perfect person to negotiate the conflicts that arise between the magical and mundane communities." She smiled and shrugged. "I don't know. Just a thought." She shrugged and slipped into the back room, presumably to get some ingredients to make one of her pre-made potions.

He sat back in his chair and thought about what she had said. Part of him had been considering a career change now that Octavia was going to be starting university in the fall and had been encouraging him to further his life as well. The police force had always enticed him a little, for the very reason Clarke had cited, the want to protect others; he just hadn't really thought about the Supernatural Relations Division before. But now that he was…

He pulled his laptop out of his bag and began Googling. A happy feeling that Clarke knew him so well took up residence in his stomach. Then it jolted him. It wasn't just that she knew him well, or that she helped Octavia in a time of turmoil, or that he was starting to think of her as his best friend. She was all around kind and beautiful and he finally recognized the feeling that had been slowly growing over the months he had gotten to know Clarke: he had a crush. And not a small one.

* * *

 **Author's Note:  
If you couldn't tell by the beginning notes, or if you just forgot, this is the prequel to "Fanning the Flames" which you can find with my other stories.**

 **And as always, favorites, follows, and reviews are guaranteed to make this author smile. I'm also actually pretty good at responding to messages and reviews either here or on Tumblr (DracoTerrae9099), so please feel free to come chat with me =)**


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